US Policy in the Middle East: A Complicated Web of Allies That Leads Nowhere

Although modern terrorism has been around since well before 9/11, things changed for America with the second attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Our previous policies of largely ignoring the rise of extremist groups in the Middle East in order to combat Communism set us up for failure in the 2000’s. After two decade-long wars, we’re right back to where we started; We don’t even know who the enemy is.

We funded and trained the Afghan Mujahideen in the 80’s so they could fight a proxy war with the Soviet Union through Operation Cyclone. The USSR eventually left Afghanistan in large part due to US funding and the fact that it’s really hard to shoot someone with a tank when they blend in with the general populace. With the power vacuum created by the USSR leaving, the extremist elements we trained and funded were more than happy and capable to just go ahead and take the country over themselves. It didn’t help that almost as soon as the war was over, the US stopped really caring about Afghanistan as a country.

Our involvement in that war cemented the first building blocks to 9/11. To be fair, there is no evidence the US government gave any money to Osama Bin Laden himself. However, the fact that Uncle Sam didn’t give nephew Bin Laden a c-note for his birthday is kind of missing the point. The point being, the US made it awfully convenient for dangerous elements to create a safe haven for people who hated us. But the commies lost so I guess we broke even on that one.

We supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war because we stopped liking Iran ever since they overthrew the brutal dictator put into place by the CIA. We supplied the Iraqi government with Intelligence, weapons and training in order to crush our previous ally along with actually killing Iranians ourselves. To make the situation even more convoluted, we also supplied weapons to Iran. Human rights violations and the use of poison gas against the Kurds during this war were ignored. Ignored until Iraq invaded our better friends, Kuwait. Suddenly, Iraq was in fact evil because genocide is only shitty when it doesn’t serve our interests.

And speaking of the Kurds…during the Gulf War President Bush inadvertently encouraged the Iraqi people to rebel and fight against Saddam Hussein even though the US had no intentions of actually disposing of Saddam. When the Gulf War cease fire came about, Saddam was mainly left to his own, except for a no-fly zone in northern Iraq, to subjugate those that fought for freedom. The reason we didn’t want to overthrow Saddam was because we were still pretty scared of Iran and we knew Saddam was willing to fight them. I mean, what’s a little mass murder when you’ve got American freedom to protect?

Fast forward to the present. Saddam is gone due to the reinvasion of Iraq by the US. That, along with the withdrawal of US forces and the Arab Spring, created a power vacuum letting a little group called ISIS start to cause trouble. So the US is now funding the Kurds again in their fight against a group we dislike. If we stopped there, things might be ok, but if that were the case I wouldn’t be writing this article. You see, in our fight to destroy ISIS we’ve convinced Turkey to join because wars are always better when as many people as possible are involved. Turkey finally relented and immediately started bombing the Kurds along with ISIS because they think the Kurdish movement there are also terrorists. The US has remained mostly silent while this happens. It’s a cluster fuck is what I’m trying to say.

So to recap, the US funded, trained and armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to defeat communism and then left, leaving the country to fend for itself, thus opening the gates for the Taliban to take power. The US supported Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The US left the Kurds hanging after they rebelled in 1991 after we invaded our former ally for invading a better ally. The US ignored the use of chemical weapons and genocide by Saddam’s regime during the Iran-Iraq war and then used those same incidents to help justify another invasion in 2003. The US, again, supports the Kurds but is allowing Turkey to bomb them in order to defeat ISIS.

Which begs the question, what in the fuck are we even doing?

Disclaimer: The content in this article is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of US Patriot Tactical.

Mark spent 7 years in the Minnesota National Guard as a combat medic. When's he's not busy losing friends, he's drinking with his dog. Befriend him on Facebook or follow him on a Twitter that he doesn't use.

Mark spent 7 years in the Minnesota National Guard as a combat medic. When’s he’s not busy losing friends, he’s drinking with his dog. Befriend him on Facebook or follow him on a Twitter that he doesn’t use.